Recent Features

The Diablo 3 Podcast #162: Season Two, Weekend OneSeason Two began on Friday, and it’s time to recap the weekend. Rushing races, preparing for level 70, RNG heartbreaks, fast leveling strategies, new season camaraderie, and more. Featuring N3rdwards, Master X, m0uikkai, Amedon, and Flux. This show features two separate twenty-five minute conversations, going quick and getting to the heart of the S2 rushing […]

New Reaper of Souls Beta Path and D3 PTR Patch Now Live

The New Reaper of Souls Beta Patch and D3 PTR Patch is now live and available on the test realm. It’s got a ton of impactful changes to almost every aspect of the game, including monsters, skills, legendary items, general difficulty, and much more. Here’s a very short summation of some of the bigger shifts I noticed in my quick over:

Tons of skills changes, almost all of them shifting elemental damage types.

General difficulty easing in all difficulties up through Torment 1.

Big changes to the rewards from Bounties and Nephalem Rifts.

Nerfs to a lot of bosses, including easier elemental affixes and the removal of many enrage timers.

Major revisions to crafting, including shifted material costs, increased numbers of blue/white materials from salvaging, and general balance revision.

Dozens of legendary and set items got new/different bonus properties.

Treasure Goblins have been made more rewarding.

And more. Much MOAR.

Here’s a quote from a part near the end, with the big changes to Bounties and Nephalem Rifts in Reaper of Souls.

ADVENTURE MODE

Bounties

Horadric Caches no longer drop Rift Keystones

Rift Keystones are now Rift Keystone Fragments

A player may use 5 Rift Fragments to summon a Nephalem Rift

Horadric Caches now drop 2 Rift Fragments

Bounties now grant Rift Fragments

The first bounty completed in any Act will no longer reward Rift Fragments or Blood Shards

Bounties have had their Blood Shard awards adjusted

Normal Bounties grant 1 Blood Shard

Expert and Bonus Bounties grant 2 Blood Shards

Master and above Bounties grant 4 Blood Shards

Bounty Scrolls have been re-tuned.

There are now five types of Bounty Scroll buffs

Damage bonuses for Bounty Scrolls have been reduced from 300% to 25%

Players will now only earn rewards from bounties if they are in the same zone as the bounty when it is completed

The experience and gold rewards now varies depending on the type of bounty completed

The reward of each bounty should now be more proportional to the time and effort required to complete the bounty

Nephalem Rifts

Rift bosses now have a chance to drop a Fiery Brimstone from levels 1-60

Treasure Goblin packs are now more rare

Numerous Rift bosses have received damage and health tuning passes

Click through for the huge patch notes, because infos.

GENERAL

Expert, Master, and Torment I difficulty levels have all been made slightly easier

Torment II, III, IV, and V have picked up the slack so that Torment VI stays roughly the same

The Paragon levelling curve has been adjusted to better match XP gain rates at max level

Players who had relatively high Paragon levels (250+) should find their rate of levelling significantly faster

Player hit boxes have been adjusted to more closely represent character models

Both male and female models of the same class share the same hit box size

Bug Fix: The Legendary Star indicator on the mini map should now properly show up when a Legendary or Set Item drops

BOSSES

The following bosses no longer have enrage timers except in Torment difficulty and above

Which organs drop from bosses is now dependent on which Infernal Machine was used to open the portal

If a player uses a level 60 Infernal Machine, the boss will drop the level 60 organs

Old reagents now drop from bosses from levels 60-70

This is to prevent situations where players could obtain the new organs using old Infernal Machines; this also allows players at level 70 the option to farm for and craft the level 60 Hellfire Ring if they wish